Every time my sister comes to visit, I can count on her being dressed in a sweater of some sort. By nature, she’s usually cold but she knows that we don’t keep the heat up too high at our house so she comes prepared. Actually, I don’t think we are very frugal when it comes to keeping the heat on during the winter. I have the thermostat programmed to be 69 degrees during the hours that we are usually home. The one exception to that is when I’m working from home. I have programmed the thermostat to drop to 65 degrees when it’s just me here during the day since I can just close my home office door and stay relatively warm from the heat of the computers and monitors.
Last weekend I headed down to Portland to visit friends for the weekend and stayed at a very good friend of mine’s. We grew up together (two doors apart) and he’s like a brother to me. I know him well enough to know that when I visit his house, I need to bring a sweater, and a parka. While the weather was only in the high 50’s and very low 60’s last weekend, his house was a solid 62 degrees when I got there. It actually felt pretty cold. As the season changes, he usually lets the temperature float in the 50’s and he just bundles up. He was nice enough to turn the heat up to 64 while I was there so I only had to wear a sweatshirt. As the heat came on it had that smell from not having been on for many months. I almost felt kind of guilty that I was the reason he turned the heat on for the first time this year, although I didn’t complain or ask for him to.
So, is your house a sweater house? What temperature do you keep your heat at during the winter months? Do you try to see how late in to the fall you can go without turning your heat on like we do?
Some people give me a hard time because I’m always thinking about how to shave dollars from our energy bill. I’ve been the butt of more than a few jokes abut being frugal but I don’t mind. I just don’t like giving away any more of my money than I have to. I do try to keep from going to one extreme or the other which is why we turn the heat all the way up to 69 degrees. I know our energy management must be working reasonably well though because I get a monthly letter showing how much energy we use compared to other homes in the area. We consistently use less energy than comparable homes so I know that, while I’m still comfortable in the house, I’m also doing a decent job at keeping our energy use at an optimum level.
Yup, my house is the sweater house too. Once the heat is needed I used to set the heat to 18C (64F) when home and 17C (62F) when out or sleeping. Last year I gave in to my families complainst and switched to 19C (66F)/17.5C. Now this year I’m tired of being that uncomfortable at home that I have to walk around the house dressed for outside or under a blanket just to feel warm and cozy at home so we moved up again to 20C (68F) and 18C. I think right here is a good mix of comfort and cost savings.
I agree Triciatim. It’s all about balance and what’s comfortable to you. As you point out, the whole family gets to participate in the decision though. Luckily my family never complains, (but 69 degrees is pretty darned comfortable)
72 here and it still feels cold in parts of my house (unfortunately, it’s the family room where we spend all of our time).
We have 10 foot ceilings, which don’t help and a huge entryway with 20 foot ceilings and a huge window, which also hurts us. Even worse, the sun comes right in through that window and hit the thermostat, causing it to show a temp of 80+ (so, the heat must be set on something higher to even turn on at all). People are surprised when my heat is set on 82 just so that it turns on.
Frankly all houses should be “sweater houses” – there was a really interesting study done in the UK a few years ago that compared quality of life now and 50 years ago. They asked questions like “how cold do you feel around the house?” – the point being that it was looking at peoples perceptions of their living environment. At the same time they also compared actual indoor room temperatures.
Between now and 50 years ago people perceive their experience of temperature in their houses exactly the same – overall people feel just as cold/warm as they did back then. The big difference is that in terms of actual temperature 50 years ago indoor temperatures averaged 18deg C and today they average 23 deg C.
I don’t know about you but I find anything above 20 deg C oppressively hot – if that is the average then some people must be running their houses very warm indeed!
What has changed about how we live? Well for a start people have become accustomed to wear summer clothes indoors in winter. Why should we be able to completely ignore outdoor conditions and wear T-shirts through the winter month?
That is before we even get onto cost savings of lower indoor temperatures – If you lower the gap between indoor and outdoor temperatures by 10% that pretty much guarantees you a heating cost saving of 10% – for us in the UK that is the difference between a house at 20deg C vrs 18 deg C.
Years ago I heard a gentleman on the radio say “use a snow suit for sleeping”
to keep warm during the winter to save money.
Have not found anything on this idea in ternet searches.